The Metal Angel
by Robert S. Kester
Summary: My version of a Terminator Salvation sequel. Includes a Terminator movie series version of TSCC's Derek Reese.
1. Chapter 1 Finding Him

It had been weeks since the transplant. John was still bedridden and had missed the funeral of Marcus. The others weren't sure how the funeral would be, considering what he was, but Blair had decided it was best to burn him, with Thermite, since Skynet could find his grave and use his body for something else; some other frightful project.

But Marcus was a man; he wasn't frightful… He was a man who had given his heart up to save John. And John was living, with a strong heart, thanks to him. Images of Skynet Central were in his mind, mostly of the T-800 there. It looked just like the two who had come to save him before… One came when he was twelve the first time, and another came when he was twenty-one the second time.

But now the machines didn't fool him—he knew they could be reprogrammed, by anyone. But Marcus couldn't; Marcus was different, something new. Or old. How long had Skynet planned this? Temporal mechanics tended to confuse John, and he was already in a weakened state, so he backed out of that train of thought… He knew one thing, which was that they wanted Kyle, and John had given that information to them inadvertently through Marcus.

But Marcus had no idea he was being used. At least, not until the very end… John could only wonder what was going to happen now. Were the 800s going to go into mass production? If so, fighting would be a lot more difficult, and this would outline the true start of the war. The fight against 600s, Harvesters, and Hunter-Killers would not be able to compare to an army of T-800s marching towards them, armed with pulse rifles and their own brute strength.

As John stared at the ceiling of the bunker, his vision started to drift and fade until he was in a dream, only it wasn't really a dream. He was reliving the night in Skynet Central's factory, and the red, glowing eyes of the 800 were burning themselves into his mind. He relived the images of watching the molten metal freeze over it, and trying to restart Marcus' heart while he lay dead on the concrete floor of the foundry.

At the moment that the machine shoved the metal into his chest, he woke up in cold sweats, clutching at where the wound was busy healing itself and realized he felt only a tingle there. He ignored it and looked to his left to see Kate working with some lab samples. "Water, please?"

Kate turned around and smiled at him. "Sure, I'll be right back." He watched her stride off and then placed his head back on the pillow, again staring at the ceiling. The door opened to his right and it was Kyle who entered.

"Kyle? What are you doing here?"

"Well, sir… I was going to ask for your help."

"You want my help with what?"

"It's my brother, Derek. I'd like permission to mount a SAR for him." Kate had come back with John's water, and he was now drinking it as he listened to what Kyle had to say. "I think he's important, not just to me, but to all of us."

"How so?" He took a small sip of his water since his medication made swallowing a difficult undertaking.

"He had been slightly misbehaved when he was younger, so he spent some time in military school. I know he's still alive, because I heard him on the radio, but the coordinates couldn't be tracked precisely. We know he's in the LA zone."

"A Skynet hotspot… It's too dangerous. He can't still be alive." Kyle sat down in a chair beside John's bed. "We can't sacrifice so many men for one."

"I'll go alone."

"Alone? No, you're too important, Kyle."

"Why am I so important?"

John sighed and clutched his chest but it was just itching again. "I've never told anyone about this… Except for Marcus, but you are my father."

"What? How is that possible?"

"Skynet develops time travel technology and sends an 800 back in time to kill my mother before I'm ever born. I send you back to protect her. There you father me."

Kyle was awestruck, and simply watched silently as John opened up a book on the table beside him and handed a picture that was tucked between the pages to Kyle. It was a faded and bent Polaroid, showing Sarah Connor and her dog in the Jeep at the gas station in Mexico. There was that look of sadness and apprehension on her face.

"Is this her?"

John nodded and started to cough, taking another sip of water. "Kate, how much longer am I going to have to heal?"

"It will be a few more weeks at least, John. You need to stay here at least that long. You could be out of bed by next week, but only on short walks. You can't do anything serious until you have fully recovered."

Kyle stared at Kate's pregnant stomach and John chuckled. "It's your grandchild. We don't know what it is yet. If it's a boy, I want to name him Kyle."

"Kyle?" John nodded and coughed a little. The cough may have been small, but it was enough to cause pain in his chest with everything barely holding together. He grunted at the extreme throbbing that was now present but dismissed Kate when she tried to increase his Morphine drip.

"No, there's not enough left. Don't waste it on me. I'm a soldier; I can live through the pain."

"John, please, let me…"

"No," He immediately interrupted, "Please. Save it for those who truly need it."

She simply walked away, grabbing John's water glass to refill it. John sighed and rolled his head back into the pillow almost to the point of the headboard being in full view.

Kyle silently exhaled Derek's name but John still heard it, and he looked at Kyle, who was deep in thought. "Take whoever you need. Go, find my uncle and bring him back. Alive, and that's an order."

Kyle stood up and saluted John before walking off to prepare a team for the mission.

John drifted back into his dreams again, and this time it was more peaceful. It was just his mom, and him, living after their defeat of the T-1000. It was peaceful, even though they were on the run. It was so because she was there for him, as opposed to now when he no longer had her.

He remembered that day at her grave, Judgment Day. The T-800, Kate, and himself… He remembered that entire event and relived it in his dream. It stopped at the bombs falling and being in Crystal Peak with Kate. This woke him up in a fury of sweat and he reached out for Kate, who was again working with lab samples.

She rushed to his side, taking his hand. "John? Are you okay?"

"No! I just want it all to end. But I can't. It's just all so hard…"

"John, I need you to calm down. Please. You'll hurt yourself." John sighed and just drifted back to sleep.

The ruins of the Los Angeles area were cold with the day's overcast, that covered Kyle's five man team while they moved silently, watching for any machines in the area. Continually they scanned the radio, as Derek's distress call had become more frequent and they were able to track it every time it was broadcasted. The signal was moving south, and very slowly, so he had to have been on foot.

The team had reached an open street and they were using hand signals to direct each other. One of them had spotted a T-600 in the distance, and presumed that it hadn't spotted them yet. One soldier was carrying a rocket launcher and had it trained onto the machine, prepared to fire.

Kyle turned to one of his men. "Do we have visual ID?"

"Yes, sir, we have visual ID. Terminator target identified. Rocket boy wants permission to fire."

"Permission granted." The man holding the rocket launcher acquired lock-on and fired the rocket, which adjusted itself in order to hit its target. The explosion obliterated the target, leaving only shrapnel behind. "You can bet they heard that. Let's try to get into one of these buildings."

They quickly crawled inside of one that looked as if it could survive the close flyby of an HK and promptly hid. But no HK came anywhere near the building, only another 600 walked close by it, but it did not scan the building. What was it doing?

It stood there, and when one of the soldiers moved slightly and knocked a small can down, the loud ring of the tin on concrete attracted the attention of the machine. On its HUD was the vision of the building's interior through the dust covered window. Its circular targeting cursor moved over the general area of the officers' hiding spots, with the text indicating, "permissions://Human forms identified, no Skynet operatives are in this area. Permission to fire granted."

The 600 then switched to a grenade launcher as its active weapon and began firing the explosive shells into the structure, causing a cloud of smoke to build up through which it again scanned for human forms. It was able to detect movement patterns in the smoke and decided the best course of action was to crash through the glass, into the building and pursue its targets. The smoke was causing issues with its optical sensory units, however, and it did not anticipate the coming attack on the targeting module at the base of its skull, which caused it to sporadically and haphazardly fire its grenade launcher until the destruction caused the entire ceiling and floor above to collapse on top of the machine, crushing it.

Luckily, Kyle's team had managed to escape all of the destruction unscathed and were all worried about this drawing even more attention to themselves. They quickly moved on south, again chasing Derek's signal until they reached a destroyed bridge with no visible way around it. "Now what do we do? How are we going to find Derek now?

"We can go around."

"How, rocket boy?" He found a 600 skull and kicked it over the broken edge of the overpass in anger. "That is my brother out there! He represents hope for us. We have to find him, and now this. We survived those two machines, and for what? Nothing but a broken bridge and it's the only one within miles!"

"Sir, I have some good news."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I know where he is. We don't need the bridge."

"Why don't we need it?"

"He's at the Griffith Observatory." Morale had instantly improved for Kyle as he ordered the soldiers to move.

"I lived there once, at the Observatory, so I'm pretty familiar with it." They began the three hour journey from their position down an abandoned highway littered with scrap and half destroyed cars. Human bones also lay everywhere, with some crushed, presumably, under the heavy weight of a ground HK's tracks or a 600's foot.

They had stopped under the warning from 'rocket boy' as he stared through the digital binoculars he was using. "Three 600s, looks like they're building something. Here, take a look."

Kyle took the device and stared down the highway as he and the team hunkered down behind a partially crushed and completely rusted car body. He saw them putting what seemed like random parts together. "We have to stop them. This can't be good."

He ordered his men to move into more tactically sound positions and form a plan. They decided to scout the nearby alleyways to find a way to surround the machines without being seen, and they promptly began to run between the buildings, using their digital map devices to navigate through the ruins around them. They were all in a position to fire until one of the 600s made a deafening noise and looked directly at 'rocket boy', firing a grenade.

Chaos, smoke, damage… Luckily, rocket boy had managed to escape before the grenade came within an unsafe proximity. The 600's HUD displayed "scan://Target status Terminated." as it scanned the area where he had been. All three of them had begun to scan the surrounding buildings for more targets, but they couldn't find anyone.

This allowed Reese's team to use the element of surprise, which they did as they unleashed gunfire that the machines could not locate. Once they had stopped to reload, the 600s randomly fired into the surrounding buildings, but one of them was unable to stand upright as it had been hit in its statocystic balance sensor and was unable to determine its angle and elevation in relation to the ground. The remaining two had managed to hit, by sheer chance, one of Kyle's soldiers and kill him.

Suddenly Kyle felt a hand touch his shoulder and, by instinct, had pointed his shotgun at this person's face. "I'm not here to hurt you. Come with me if you want to live."

Kyle's faced had a puzzled look as he listened to the voice and stared at the goggles and handkerchief covering the man's face. "Derek?"

Before he could answer, gunshots rang out through the floor of the parking garage they were in, but luckily they were ducked behind a pillar. Neither of them said anything as they both ran to escape the hail of bullets. Eventually they had escaped by rappelling down an elevator shaft and running into an alleyway.

The man pulled off the goggles and cloth to reveal his face. "Yeah, Kyle, it's me."

"What were you doing there? We were looking for you."

"Yeah, I know. I've been tracking you."

"What? But your signal's coming from the Observatory."

"I left my radio there. Put it on a loop. So what? I figured it would divert Skynet to the Observatory, and it is. Saw some HKs heading that way earlier."

"I need to get my men."

"Your men?"

"Yeah, I'm part of the Resistance now."

"So, you've jumped on Connor's bandwagon, too?" Kyle was surprised at his brother's response. "Hey, bro, three 600s… Not safe."

"I'm aware of this, but I can't just leave the four of them behind." Kyle walked away and after a second Derek decided it was best to follow. They could still hear the gunfire during their entire conversation, so they knew it wasn't over.

Out in the street, only one 600 hundred was left standing and Derek thought of an idea, which he moved to implement. Taking a grenade launcher from under his long coat, he began firing at the machine, hitting it every time. The explosions were damaging and it fell down with its upper body removed from it lower.

Slowly, it inched its way toward Derek, who realized that he was out of ammunition. He knew he'd have to rely on the gunfire of Kyle's team, or fight when the machine entered the lower level of the parking garage with him. Even though its movements were slow, it had quickly advanced on him and was nearly within its arm's reach.

Derek knew this thing had the strength to throw him around like a rag doll, so he began backing away until he was behind a pile of dirt that he knew the machine would have to crawl over to reach him. It performed precisely as expected, and once it was over the dirt, a magnetic mine leapt out and attached itself to the chassis of the machine, exploding shortly after. Derek was ducked behind a pillar in order to avoid the dangerous shrapnel.

Shortly after, the team had regrouped along with Derek in order to bury their dead comrade in a makeshift grave. After this had been done, they began to advance back to Connor's base at Crystal Peak.

Little did they know that an Aerostat was tracking them, scanning their every movement and planning to acquire Kyle Reese for termination. On its HUD, it focused on Kyle Reese, with the text displaying "scan:// TARGET IDENTIFIED AS KYLE REESE. MISSION ACQUIRE FOR PROPER TERMINATION BY ANOTHER UNIT."


	2. Chapter 2 The Mission

The group had been travelling for over four hours, and night had descended upon the wasteland. They were all in what may have once been a forest, and were taking a break. Derek was on the lookout, as it did not appear that he was tired.

Kyle was puzzle by Derek's surplus of energy. "Don't you feel even the least bit tired? We've been running for the past four hours."

"I'm fine." Derek had been peeking from behind a tree into the forest, but turned to face the others. "We can't stay here for long. We have to move soon."

"Why? This is way out of any Skynet zone."

Derek shook his head and peered back into the forest. What the others did not know was that he was capable of seeing far more than they were. They did not know that Marcus Wright was not Project Angel's only test subject. Derek was peering directly at the friction heat generated by a T-600 using the infrared vision of his new eyes. Every time it would move, metal would scrape against metal and light up like a hundred suns to Derek's optical units.

He was puzzled, though, that it was incapable of seeing four human heat signatures that should have stood out quite well against the backdrop of the cold, lifeless trees. There was only one explanation, and Derek did not like the thought. It brought horrible memories to him of fighting one of those... Things...

It was so undeniably human-like, but obviously a machine. Its skin felt and looked real. It _bled_ and it _sweated_. It even had an odor.

Were there more of those things, in the forest with them? Derek knew that the only reason he was able to stand up to it was because of what he is. Derek had only become aware of his true nature one day by having the bad luck of encountering a T-600 and taking a bullet straight in the forehead. Surprised that he was alive and well, he thought his best course of action was to play dead and allow the machine to move on.

This worked, and grabbing a broken piece of a car's side mirror, he used it to check on his forehead, seeing only metal where there should have been brain cells spilling out. Was he no longer human? He had gathered that much and was surprisingly satisfied with that. He knew that he was strong now, and did not resent what he was.

"Derek? You okay?"

He snapped out of his reverie and turned to see the others eating some kind of rations. "Yeah, but stay here. I've got to check something out."

"What?"

"I got a bad feeling about these woods, let's just say that." Derek started to walk off, but Kyle stood up and caught his arm. "Kyle? Don't worry. I'll be back."

It hadn't been more than a few minutes until the group heard a silent rustling sound and watched Derek fly through the air and smack hard against a tree on the northeast edge of the campfire light. Suddenly the chrome endoskeleton of a T-800 stood before the group from the direction which Derek had come. The pieces were simple to put together; there had been a fight between the two.

What was puzzling to the group was that the machine seemed to have taken some damage, as it was dented and limping. Derek pulled himself from the ground and rushed the machine, slamming it into a tree. The force of the impact toppled the giant conifer and caused it to become akwardly perched against another tree. Derek turned back to see that the group was still there. "What are you waiting for?! RUN!"

They did as he said and left the vicinity, leaving only Derek and the machine to face off in the dim campfire light. Before he could make another move, Derek was swept off his feet and thrown by his ankles into another tree, sliding down it and onto the ground. He caught himself not too long after and mimicked the movement to the machine, but he was faster.

Before the 800 could get up, Derek was upon it, and he shoved his fist into its breastplate, crushing the metal and causing a glowing red spot to show. The fuel cell was overloading. At this sight, he ran as hard and as fast as possible into the forest, tracking the team's position with infrared in order to catch up with them.

Kyle was astonished, as he did not expect that his brother could live through that encounter. "First you don't get tired, you don't eat, and now you handle one of those things on your own?! Who are you?" Kyle's tone was filled with resentment, dissapointment, and fury. It was clear that he did not believe that this cyborg before him to be his brother, if in mind and heart but not body.

"Derek Reese. That's who I am." Kyle just shook his head and then pointed his shotgun in Derek's face. "Kyle, put the shotgun down. Please?"

"Why? It won't hurt you."

"All the more reason to." Derek tried to take the weapon but noticed that it was attached to Kyle's wrist by a string. He let go, and the next thing he knew, the butt of the stock smacked into his metal skull, knocking him into darkness.

He woke up to the vague sound of a voice. It was Kyle talking on the radio. "Yeah, Connor... Got one. Thinks it's my brother. Want us to bring it in?"

A response from the radio, a woman, "He could be your brother. What if he's like Marcus?"

"I don't know. It took down an eight hundred pretty easily. Marcus couldn't have done that."

"He saved you?"

"Yeah. But you know these things."

"We don't know this one. Bring him in."

"It. Not him. It."

"Fine, bring 'it' in."

After that, another bump on the head and then more darkness. The next time he awoke, he found that he was unable to move and were it not for infrared, he wouldn't be able to see anything, either. A metallic screeching soon resounded through the chamber and Derek realized that someone had opened the door and entered the room. The thermal image wouldn't show who it was.

"Derek..."

He knew the voice. "Kyle?"

"Are you really Derek?"

"Who else would I be?"

"I don't know... I don't know what to believe. I think you're like him."

"Like who?"

"It's a long story. Anyway, Connor's convinced that we have to let you live, that we have to let you out of here." A flood of light invaded the room and Derek had switched back to normal vision. His hands and feet were suddenly unbound, and he was free to stand on his own in the cold chamber. "You knew what you were, the whole time?"

Derek did nothing but nod.

"Whatever. Connor wants to see you." Kyle beckoned for him to follow and they left the chamber which emptied out into an underground tunnel. There were people curled up against the wall, apparently trying to keep warm in spite of the fact that Derek's thermal sensors registered ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. They took a right and entered a room in which John lay in a hospital bed, being cared for by Kate. Derek gave a curt nod and John motioned for him to take the chair beside the bed.

"I don't think you really need to sit down, do you?" John grunted as he shifted in the bed. "Just force of habit?"

"I still feel. But no, I don't really need to." He took the seat beside the bed and leaned forward, closer to John.

John was slightly taken aback, but he remembered what 'Uncle Bob' said all of those years ago: "_I sense injury..._" and he shook off the feeling. "How does that work, though?"

"Same way it does in humans, nerves... After they'd constructed my cyborg body, they grew skin around it, and through genetic engineering the nerves grew and converged through parts of my spinal column and were therefore linked with the brain. I think. It's only my theory. I've had plenty of time to work on it; I don't sleep now..." Derek peered into John's face and examined all of the features. He was clearly a man who didn't get enough sleep.

John glanced over at Kate and with a single look she knew what he wanted: water. As she left around the corner of the room, John watched her longingly and then peered back at Derek and Kyle. "It's time."

Derek was confused, but Kyle knew exactly what he was talking about. "Are you sure?"

But Derek interjected, "Wait, time for what?"

"There's an important mission that needs to be done," Kate had come back around the corner carrying a glass of water, which John took eagerly. "We've sent reprogrammed drones in for scouting missions at Serrano Point and Kaplan Hill. Skynet has successfully constructed a Temporal Displacement Array at each of those locations. The Particle Accelerator at Kaplan Hill made a perfect base for their first machine, and Serrano Point powers both that and a second, which was made by taking apart the Particle Accelerator at the CRS Air Base." He glanced at Kate, knowing that they both remembered that place from years ago, the day Skynet came online.

"Wait... Temporal Displacement? Time travel?"

John nodded.

"Why?"

"Kyle... Kyle has to go back in time and protect my mother... And father me."

Derek chuckled slightly. "Wait... So you're my nephew?" And again John simply nodded.

Kyle motioned for Derek to step off to the side for a second. "Do you think we should say something about what the 600s were doing when we found you?"

"You haven't discussed it yet?"

"No. Do you have any idea what it was?"

"It looked like they were just scavenging."

John had clearly noticed them when he cleared his throat rather feebly. "What is it? Kyle?"

"When I found Derek, the 600s there, well, they were up to something. He thinks they were just scavenging, but I'm not too sure."

"You took them all out?"

"I'm pretty sure. We reached a burnt forest after that, and there were at least three more of that new model."

"What?" John had choked on the water he'd just started to swallow. He coughed and hacked for a few seconds before he could talk again, "Skynet's already made more? They're way ahead of schedule."

Derek sat back down in the chair beside of John and stared into the water for a few seconds; a targeting cursor was outlining the shape of the glass, displaying information on its reflective properties and the comparison of lightness and darkness levels reflecting off of the glass. A millisecond later, a readout of the chemical signature of water appeared, before flashing and minimizing into an icon in the lower left-hand corner of Derek's field of vision. "I took one out..." A small icon beside the other one in the lower left-hand corner flashed, and from it a square popped up and enlarged, showing video data of Derek's fight with the T-800 in the woods. It was flashing between infrared and normal vision modes.

"How?"

"The chest area was hardened, but with enough force, I was able to cause enough impact damage to the fuel cell casing. They overloaded and exploded." The video was now looping the section where Derek punched the chest area of the eight hundred, with a text readout appearing beside the video window showing the amount of force applied and the fluid pressure flowing into his servomechanisms.

"Listen, Derek, I need you to protect Kyle. You're going into Kaplan Hill, that's the closest TDA. You can take a team, but it might work better if just the both of you go." Derek nodded and stood up, ready to leave. "Kyle, take him to weapons storage, you two get ready."

The weapons storage room had five rows of padlocked lockers in the center and a row on each four walls, only breaking up for the entrance door. Kyle took out a key ring and flipped to a silver non-descript key, unlocking the locker to the immediate right of the door. "Shotguns. We've got depleted Uranium slugs. You might like those."

Derek grabbed a Mossberg 500 and began loading it with the special shells, pumping it once it was full. He grabbed another two magazines full of shells and stuffed them in the bag Kyle had just pulled from a locker and handed him. Derek was now walking along the row of lockers against the wall, peering into large holes between the criss-crossed metal bars, looking at the equipment within. He stopped at a locker with M16s in it, pointed, and stood back as Kyle removed the lock.

"Hand me one." Derek did so and began stuffing rounds into three seperate magazines, connnecting two of them by a magazine clip and throwing one in the bag. He loaded some magazines for Kyle and handed them over. "Handguns, now, I guess?"

"Grenades." Kyle nodded and led Derek to a locker in the center row, removing the lock and swingin the door back for Derek to gain access. He proceeded to remove around six frag grenades and then resealed the locker. "Handguns now." Kyle nodded and walked off to the locker beside the M16 locker, unlocking the padlock and pulling open the door.

"Derek?"

"What?"

"What's it like? Being what... You are?"

"It feels almost like being a human. But I'm never hungry, the artificial blood they put in me takes care of nutrition. I never sleep, and they installed somekind of chip that lets me see differently through my new eyes. I see like a machine. And I'm stronger. But other than that, there's no real difference."

Kyle chuckled. "Is that all?"

They removed some handguns, Derek popped a magazine into one, racked the slide back, turned to Kyle and said, with a satisfied smirk on his face, "Let's go."


	3. Chapter 3 No Fate

"Sentry every twenty feet, along the perimeter. Their scan fields have about a two foot wide blind spot from every angle." Derek and Kyle were pouring over maps pictured on a computer screen of the Skynet base they were about to raid. Derek began pointing out areas marked by dotted lines and filled with green, and others filled with red. "When they're stationary and facing directly forward, that's where they are. Using computer plotting, we can calculate every blind spot we can possibly take advantage of. Your job is to stop, let one scan you so that it realizes you're a machine and I'll have just that small of a window to get in."

Kyle pressed a button on the screen and a simulation ran, showing their plan folding out the way they want. "And if it shoots me anyway?"

"Well, then it'll be a test of your new body's durability." He saw a pleading look form on Derek's face. "Look, I don't want to do it this way, either, but it's the _only _way."

Suddenly, a small handheld computer device that was on the table beeped. Kyle picked it up, pressed a button on the screen, and John's face appeared. His mouth moved, and lagging slightly, his words issued from a small speaker somewhere in the device. "There's a team for you guys to escort you. They've already cleared a path and lain traps for any strays on the roads you'll take. If you leave now, you can make it by midnight."

Kyle nodded, and John's face dissappeared from the screen, which was now displaying random data, and Kyle pocketed the device. They grabbed their duffle bags and weapons and began heading for the exit, however Kyle stopped Derek at the door to the room. "Look, I'm counting on you to keep me safe. All right?" Derek nodded. "Good. Let's go."

The sun had already begun to set, and the team moved silently over the long road of broken Asphalt before them. What once were trees surrounded them on both sides, and they were extremely wary of what may possibly lurk in the dark. They'd managed to travel over a mile before stopping at an overlook and taking out their spotting scopes and binoculars.

Kyle was examining the ruins of the small suburb below through his binoculars and spotted three T-600s, two on top of ruined vehicles and the other one walking down the street, peering into the ruins of the houses. Kyle looked at Derek, pointed in the direction of the machines, and offered the binoculars, but he refused. He didn't need them, because he was using his eyes to zoom in and read the thermal signatures. A wireframe had formed over their forms and calculations were appearing beside each of them.

"They're relaxed, for machines. I don't think they're the main detail." His vision zoomed outward a few times and he scanned the rubble and ruins of the houses below. He picked up a thermal signature, a human shape, tall and muscular, and zoomed in on it. He pointed it out to Kyle, who ordered them all to focus their gaze upon it. "I think it's one of the new model."

Kyle looked down at the scene and sighed. "We have to cut through there, there's just no other way."

Derek looked in his bag and pulled out a grenade. He pulled the pin, but held down the lever that prevents it from detonating, and a rotating circular reticule appeared on his field of vision. It oriented itself to appear as if it were laying on the ground far below, and moved to a certain open area east of the suburb ruins. A large, OCR A Extended font text that said "CALCULATING TRAJECTORY" appeared just as an arcing line connected itself from the position of Derek's hand to the reticule east of the rubble.

Briefly relinquishing all control of his arm, he allowed the multiple computer programs that were now a part of him to take control of it instead, and the grenade found its mark, exploding around ten feet from the ground. The attention of the 600s was drawn away from their patrol, and they let fly with their miniguns at roughly the spot the grenade exploded. Derek took out another one, ran the calculations again, and threw it slightly northeast of the one he had just thrown.

Again, the 600s diverted all of their attention and an assault to it, but when Derek examined the 800's position, it had not moved, as the wireframe models confirmed. "It can't be... Is it offline? But why is there heat?"

Just then, someone, a human came running through the woods surrounding the suburb, chased by two 600s. However, the machines stopped at the perimeter of the small ruined community, and the 600s within it did not react to the woman's presence, but when she saw them, she ducked right into the ruins where the 800 stood, unaware of its presence.

Without her even realizing it was there, the machine shoved its fist through her chest, withdrew it, and simply did nothing else as her body dropped to the ground. It barely even moved as it leaned back against the wall, affording as much shadow coverage as possible. Derek laughed.

Kyle clapped him on the back and he stopped. "What, man?"

"It's a test. It's a field test of the 800's Artificial Intelligence. They're testing how well it ignores distractions and focuses on its targets, compared to the 600."

"What... What about us? Derek, does this mean they were expecting us?"

"No, I don't think so, not unless we've got a leak... I mean, we planned all of this in Connor's base... So, how... ? Wait... No... Not, me? But I don't know if I'm linked or not, and how to even tell..."

"Marcus had some kind of a device at the base of his skull. It let Skynet see what he saw and everything. You don't think you have one?"

"I... I don't know."

"Well, if, and I'm just saying _if _they really do know everything, then what can we do? Really, we can't form another plan, they'll just know that one, too. So we have to carry on with this one." Kyle made a wink blatantly obvious, and Derek may have known what was going on. The thought came to his head that Skynet was going to think they have a new plan because of Kyle's wink, so they were going to prepare for something new though there was no new plan.

Derek looked back at the machines below and leaned back onto a large rock while staring at the moon. It was full, and his programs restlessly ran calculations. It traced an outline around the moon and measured that, then it included in the known distance of the moon and used that to calculate its actual size and the amount it appeared to be reduced by from this distance. It was just over one thousand percent.

Derek thought for a second and looked at the burnt woods below. "Can't we just go through there?"

Kyle shook his head. "Traps are too thick. We'd die in an instant. Course, they're not enough to harm a machine..."

"Guess I've got no choice, then..."

"What? Fight it?" Derek nodded. "No, Derek, even with being what you are, it's crazy."

"Relax. I'll be back. Promise." Without saying another word, Derek took a shotgun, an M16, four grenades, and headed off down a path into the small suburb. He was within the perimeter and the 600s examined him, their reticules moving over his body and recognizing the mechanical endoskeleton underneath his skin. Derek took out his shotgun, ran toward the three machines and began pumping slugs into them.

Because of their weak Titanium battle chassis, he was able to completely destroy each of their heads in only a few shots, but the shotgun was left empty. He threw it down, pulled the pin on a grenade, waited a second, and threw it into the house where the 800 was. It exploded as soon as it was within the threshold of the ruined building, and the force threw the 800 out of the house and into some rubble.

Quickly, the machine arose and ran toward Derek, who ran toward it as well. The 800 threw its arm at Derek, but Derek was faster and he siezed it by the wrist, clutching partly onto dangling skin and partly onto cold Coltan. Derek began to slowly close his hand tighter and tigher on the machine's wrist, like a vice grip, and the metal servos began to give way, despite their extreme durability. The machine gazed at its now useless hand with one glowing red and one flesh eye, almost fearful or bewildered by the now useless appendage.

"And who built me? Huh?" Derek punched the machine in the face, knocking it slightly backwards. "Skynet. The same who built you."

The machine did not retaliate and simply listened. On its red tinted vision was a small line of text, reading "Chipset Mode: Read/Write, Learning Protocol: A2".

"They don't care about you. You're made in a factory and you're just a test to them. In fact, they built me to be stronger, faster, more human. If self preservation is important to you, then you'll stop this because I _will _destroy you."

The machine's reticule focused on Derek's face, and a change was added to the line of "UNKNOWN TARGET. ACTION TERMINATE." to make it "UNKNOWN TARGET. ACTION TERMINATION OVERRIDE. NEW ACTION FLEE." and the machine began to back away before turning and running.

Derek simply gazed in amazement. Had he really just convinced a dangerous killing machine to ignore its programming? The answer would have to remain a solid yes for now, though Derek was not satisfied that there wasn't more to this.

Derek signaled for the team from the overlook and waited for them before leading them all through the darkness. His enhanced vision made him the prime candidate to take point and lead the team onward through the wastes. After about three of four miles, bright lights had come into view as they were looking at the entrance to Kaplan Hill and Serrano Point within the perimeter set up by Skynet. "This is it."

Derek looked over at Kyle, who gave him another obvious wink. He had to make sure Skynet took that to mean the plan had changed. "So, we blow the sentries and run past as hard as we can, that's phase one. We only have two missiles, but that'll give us a big enough window. Derek, we'll set up, you distract, okay?"

Derek nodded, but he then wondered, would Skynet really think the plan's been changed if they hadn't talked about it until now? It was worth a try, so Derek ran down the broken Asphalt and stopped in front of the giant sentry bot. It let out a deafening, low frequency sound and its imager unit scanned Derek, who glanced at Kyle as he ran past the machine without stopping. The imager of the sentry slowly and methodically scanned over Derek's body, recognizing the machinery underneath his flesh and it backed down, continuing its scan of the field and not even noticing Derek as he walked past it.

Derek met Kyle in the transport hangar, where one transport's human prisoners were being offloaded by two 600s, and they proceeded to find an entrance into the base. Suddenly, there was a large banging sound from where the prisoners were lined up and the sound of a short burst of minigun shots. Derek cringed with the thought of the sight of slaves being riddled with bullets, but he took the chance to look anyway.

The sight was not what he expected. The two 600s lay on the ground, their armor plating looking like swiss cheese, and one of them missing its gun. The prisoners were all okay, and standing amongst them was the 800 from the ruined suburb, clothed, its skin hanging off and its arm now crushed, the other one holding the minigun. It focused its glowing red and flesh eyes on Derek and gave only a curt nod before leaving the prisoners standing there in awe, and scratching their heads about what had just happened, to approach the two brothers.

When it spoke, it had a deep voice with an Austrian accent. "Come with me if you want to live."

"We have to get him," Derek gestured toward Kyle. "To the Time Displacement Equipment."

Suddenly, there was a loud bang and a tall figure appeared from in between two transports, also holding a minigun. The T-800 quickly threw Kyle behind it and Derek moved to help protect Kyle as well. The figure let fly with all of its ammo, which both the 800 and Derek took into their bodies. After the unknown figure had emptied its weapon, it started to move toward the three. The 800 turned to the other two with an almost anxious look on his face. "Go. Now!"

Derek and Kyle ran hard until they were in a hallway that was deep inside the complex, and they had branching hallways on all sides of them. "Which way?"

A holographic projection of a man's face suddenly shot from a device on the wall and formed in the center of the small circular hub. "Greetings, Angel two four one dash two a dash two one nine two, where are you trying to go?"

Derek looked at Kyle, who only nodded, and then he turned back to the projection. "Um, Time Displacement Laboratory?"

"Very well, hallway to the left and then a left, followed by a right." Derek nodded as the projection faded away and he and Kyle ran down the halls per its instructions until a large metal door slid out of their way to permit them into a square room with a pane of glass on the front wall and a computer panel below it. Through the glass, equipment could be seen with a glowing blue orb of light in the middle. To the right of the glass was another large door like the one they had just entered, but with a holographic line of text over the center of it saying "LOCKED - AWAITING TEMPORAL COORDINATES".

As Kyle approached the computer to enter in the temporal coordinates, there was a large metal scraping sound as the door to the room was ripped off and at the same time the voice of the projection from the hall was saying, "Unit three seven nine two b, this laboratory is currently in use and your presence may disrupt proper functioning of the equipment, please leave immediately." but the hulking figure ignored it. When Derek examined it, he noticed it looked just like the one that had just saved them except that it was not clothed.

The machine raised its hand, which had been holding something, and Derek caught sight of what it was. It was the head of the 800 that had saved them, its eye no longer glowing red and cords dangling from its neck. The 800 before them threw the head of the defeated machine at Derek's feet and approached him slowly. Knowing what he had to do, Derek rushed at the machine and threw it into the hallway, all to buy Kyle enough time. Kyle had managed to input the coordinates, but the door would not open. It now read, "LOCKED - IMPROPER CONDITIONS". but this was soon remedied as the T-800 threw Derek straight through the door, causing a large crashing sound and electricity from the TDE to arc into the control room.

One bolt of it shot at a device at the back of the room, which exploded and suddenly there was no light, other than what was emanating from the TDE sphere. The T-800 completely ignored Kyle and Derek and walked swiftly into the sphere, dissappearing in a bright flash. Kyle bent down over Derek, who was just now beginning to stir.

"Kyle? You... You have to go, now!" Kyle helped Derek stand up and they walked over to the sphere. The sound of footsteps were still echoing throughout the room even though they both had stopped. Kyle glanced at the darkness beyond the pane of glass and saw four red glowing dots. "Go. NOW!"

One of the machines had walked into the room as Kyle was getting ready to get in the sphere. It was another T-800, just like the one that had just gone through. Without hesitation, Kyle jumped into the light and the last thing he saw was Derek shoving his fist into the machine's chest and the spot beginning to glow bright orange. Even though he had been basically stationary up until now, something jerked him and he was suddenly dangling in midair above a dirty alleyway. Physics suddenly kicked in and he hit the pavement with a large crunch, groaning as the pain coarsed throughout his body.

Though it was agonizing, he couldn't dwell on it. He was here for a reason, he had to find Sarah Connor and protect her from that monster that had gone through just before him. He quickly stood, held his side for a bit, and set off into the night to hunt for some clothes and a weapon.


End file.
